About

The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge races over 3,022 km from Darwin to Adelaide and is renowned as the world’s toughest and longest competition for solar cars. The 2017 race marks the 30th anniversary of the World Solar Challenge, and we want to bring the winners trophy back to the UK for the first time in what is set to be the event’s biggest ever running.

We have some of the UK’s leading aerodynamic, automotive and clean-energy engineers, major sponsors including the CFMS supercomputer cluster and The QUARTZ Corp silicon mines, as well as motor racing specialists and have a strong chance of taking the crown from the Dutch reigning champions. And we need your help.

Our aim is to design, build and race a solar-powered car across Australia in nine months time and along the way we hope to show off the very best of British engineering and innovation. We want the project to inspire and engage students and young professionals to apply their talents into sustainability – and thereby secure the future for us all. And, of course, we want to win. Our aim is to take first place in Cruiser Class, which helps develop more real-world solar-power cars.

Risks and challenges

The contributions from the Kickstarter campaign only make up part of the cost of funding the solar car. The team members and our sponsors will contribute the rest of the cash or in-kind contributions required to build, ship and get the solar car to the start line in Darwin.

Between now and October 2017 we still have a lot to do, such as finalising certain aspects of the design, procuring suppliers for certain components, agreeing manufacturing partners, shipping arrangements and recruiting further corporate sponsorship. Some of our budget costs may change which could mean the car on the start line is different from the one we envisage today. However, our ability to build the car and race it across Australia in no way affects our ability to deliver on the rewards we are committed to giving you.